I see many people who want to lose weight. It’s something they feel is important for their health regimen. Several years ago, I started a 21-day detox program for these patients. It has been wildly successful. But the program is much more than just a weight loss program. It is a powerful detox program. You will lose weight with it. But the real benefit is that you start to detox naturally. It is a way to feel better and reduce total toxin load and lose weight. You’ll start to feel better, but even more importantly, you will start to learn how to better take care of yourself. Weight loss is great. But if you don’t feel good, what does it matter? Detoxing naturally is important. Let’s go through some of the benefits of elimination and detox.

Detoxification is the process of eliminating toxic substances in the body. Toxin accumulation in the human body can be harmful. Our bodies accumulate toxins through food, drink, and the air we breathe. The body also produces some toxins as waste products of metabolism and digestion. What are some examples? Eating fish larger than a salmon can lead to mercury toxicity. Tuna in particular are large and accumulate many toxins including mercury. If you eat a lot of tuna, these toxins enter your body, and if you cannot eliminate or detoxify well, they will be stored in the body. The FDA recommends pregnant women avoid eating large fish due to this very problem.

The air we breathe can also be an issue. Oregon Public Broadcasting highlighted the poor air quality in Southeast Portland. Monitoring found high levels of cadmium and arsenic. Air quality has been a problem in this area for some time, but levels were high of late. Heavy metals can be extremely toxic to the body. (You can find out more at Scorecard.org for your neighborhood.)

Exposure doesn’t mean you’re doomed, though. Why are some people so adversely affected by toxins? I have discussed epigenetics in a previous podcast. Changes in our DNA function change our capacity to discharge toxins. There are three body systems responsible for detoxing the body:

• Digestive System: We remove toxins through defecation

• Respiratory System: We remove toxins through breathing

• Urinary System: We remove toxins through urination.

I want to save the respiratory system for another article. It’s an interesting system for elimination. I will save that for a discussion about breathing and heart rate variability. But, if the other two systems overload, the lungs are affected.

Each elimination system removes different types of toxins. If one system overloads, the others try to pick up the pace. If they can’t do that, the body will send waste through the skin. This is why some people get rashes or acne unexpectedly.

When the body can’t reduce toxic load, it may store them in fat cells. Our cells may hold onto water to dilute the toxin. Some people will get fluid or inflammation in their joints. Other people start to have problems in their nervous system. There are patterns to this that are identifiable by trained professionals. I can distinguish the causes of subtle changes in the body. My patients may come to me noticing weight gain. They feel like they are bloating or retaining water. I notice subtle changes in liver and kidney function. Changes that can foretell more serious health issues. A detox can be a good place to start reducing total load so that those problems can heal.

Detoxing naturally isn’t about weight loss. My patients who have done the 21-day Detox and Weight Loss Program for home notice this. They feel lighter. It’s not just the number on the scale. Yes, they have lost 15-25 pounds in that 21 days. But more importantly, they begin to feel their nagging aches and pains lift. They stop having pain in the morning when they get out of bed. They feel their digestion improve. They start to sleep better. Their mental fog lifts. These are some of the benefits people notice.

Our bodies need to remove toxins to function properly. Our liver removes complex toxins and shuttles these waste products to the colon. If the body can’t remove them fast enough they will sometimes diffuse back into the body. This is why Naturopaths are so interested in bowel habits of patients. If the bowels aren’t working efficiently, the liver’s work is for naught.

The kidney performs some of the same functions for different types of toxins. It removes excess electrolytes such as sodium and water soluble toxins.

Supplementation can be helpful for detoxification too. There are many vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and botanicals that can improve elimination. Knowing the imbalance is important though. Giving something for the liver when the problem is in the kidney may not help the underlying problem. In most cases, this won’t hurt the person. One reason I practice natural medicine is because of the credo “do no harm.” Diluted botanical remedies, neurofeedback, supplements, and other natural supplements are generally very safe. But haphazard prescriptions won’t always help the patient. They can also be expensive. Understanding why the problems exists allows for targeting treatments that are safe and cost-effective.

A detox can help jump start the body in being more efficient in removing toxins by reducing load. This can clear away some of the compounding (or confounding?) causes of the problem. Just by eating properly, your body will have more space to remove things that are harmful to you. Supplementation can be helpful in suggesting to the body to release the toxins. After a detox, sometimes the underlying cause becomes more obvious. Treatment is then more targeted and effective.

While the 21-day detox for health and weight loss isn’t for everyone, it has helped many people. The results are astounding. My patients start learning how to eat better. They learn to make better choices, how to control portions, and which foods affect them adversely. I work with patients to help their bodies become more efficient eliminators. The detox is only one way that I do that. You can find out more about the detox here.

Every year, the Holiday season seems to get more hectic. All the stores are having the best Christmas sale ever. There are magazine proclaiming how to make the holidays perfect. It’s a lot of pressure. Many of my patients ask me how they can manage stress during this time. They complain of fatigue, depression, insomnia, and feeling run down. The stress leaves them susceptible to colds and flu. Is there anything you can do to avoid this? The answer is yes. Let’s look at some tips to help you avoid the stress of the holidays and take better care of yourself.

The first tip has to do with diet. Right after Halloween, I walked into my local “health food” store and noticed something. There were holiday treats everywhere. Chocolate, cookies, and cakes were on every aisle. Patients tell me that from November until the end of the year everyone brings treats into work. There is temptation all around.

You can’t always avoid the treats at work. (Although you don’t have to eat them. ) But you don’t have to bring the sugar home. Instead of baking high-carbohydrate and sugary treats, try something new. These treats can give you the sweetness of this time of year in a healthy form. There are tons of blogs that have paleo and refined sugar free options for treats. (Big Man’s World and the Detoxinista are two of my favorites.) I suggest trying at least one new recipe this holiday.

Holidays have become a frantic rush to out do the year before. Magazines claim that we can make this years meal “the Best Holiday Dinner Ever!” But a simple refocus on the holiday from “best ever” to “let’s enjoy what we have” will help us reduce stress.

Here are a few tips to make the holiday meal less stressful:

• Think basics. If you want to do a holiday dinner, stick with the basics: meat and vegetables. If your guests have special requests, invite them to prepare that and bring it to share. You don’t have to do it all. The point is to express joy and love, not to spend your time and energy catering to a huge crowd.

• Draft help. Split up your task list and share it with the expected guests. Getting others involved will help them feel a part and allow you to enjoy the holiday more. Drafting help includes clean up and dishes. Set a rule that the TV doesn’t go on until the dishes are finished.

• Let go. If you’re the type that obsesses over details and needs things done just right, this is a good time to let it go. (Frozen song aside ). Remember that the dinner takes a fraction of the time to consume as it does to prepare. Let others help in their way so you can enjoy your guests.

Meals and sugar aren’t the only things stressful about the holidays. All the running around, buying the perfect gift, and parties can be stressful. Here are a few more tips to keep your mental health.

• Don’t be in a rush. Take time to enjoy each holiday celebration as it comes. If you don’t get everything done that’s OK. Be sure to enjoy the holiday yourself. If you like to give gifts, do so. But don’t at the expense of your own sanity and pocketbook.

• Drink Water. Drink enough water to stay hydrated. This will help your body detoxify. We tend to eat a lot of rich food this time of year. Water can help. It also helps decrease your chance of getting sick.

• Make sleep a priority. Try for 8 to 9 hours of deep refreshing sleep per night. This will recharge your batteries and helps prevent illness.

• Take Time for You. This is a social time of year. There are many parties and activities that people do in December. It’s easy to lose sight of your need to have some down time. Along with extra sleep, it’s a good idea to have some alone time. If you have people coming to stay with you, take a time-out before they arrive.

• Be Thankful. Many studies show that gratitude is a key component of health. The more thankful we are for things, the better our mental health. It can ward off depression and anxiety that could otherwise be a challenge this time of year.

I’m sure there are other ways to de-stress the holidays. These are just some simple ideas to get you started. Remember it is the season for sharing, joy, and love. If you can focus on those, you will be that much closer to staying healthy during the season.

I hadn’t felt very well for a few days but one morning I woke up and could barely move. Every muscle in my body was screaming on fire. I had a fever. About 104 degrees F. I wasn’t going anywhere that day, I felt terrible but I was excited. My cat, Hickory, came to lay on the bed with me while I sweated there. He was new to the family and looked at me as if to say, “now you get it human, hang out and relax. You don’t need to work so hard.”

My fever was so high I was not thinking clearly. I knew there was a homeopathic remedy that would help me but I couldn’t remember which one in my state. I thought of something Dr. Thom said one day in class. “An acute illness is one that you either recover from on your own or you die.” I felt as if the latter would happen at any moment.

Eventually my fever broke and I not only started feeling better, I started feeling the best I had felt in my life. It wasn’t just the juxtaposition of the illness though. I felt as if something deeper had cleared within my body and soul. I knew that something had shifted in me.

How to Stay Healthy?

Many people with a fever that high would have called the doctor, or taken something to bring the fever down. But fevers aren’t necessarily a bad thing and it seems as if the wrong lessons may have been learned about fevers. And aspirin may have had something to do with it. Let me explain.

World War I from 1914-1918 became the bloodiest conflict to that point in human history. The combination of modern technology with battle tactics from the 18th century proved to be extremely deadly and indecisive. Soldiers would charge positions with machine guns only to be slaughtered senselessly in moments. At the first Battle of the Marne, over 10,000 French and British soldiers were killed in approximately 30 minutes. During the retreat, the German soldiers didn’t even fire upon the enemy they were so sickened by the slaughter.

Needless to say, when the armistice came on November 11th there was much celebration. People would go out and see their friends and family. Soldiers started returning home too. But as the soldiers returned some carried with them influenza. People started feeling feverish and achy. Aspirin had two different names on either side of the Atlantic Ocean and two different uses. In the US it was mostly used for pain. In Europe it was used to lower fevers. The soldiers learned the fever reducing usage from being at war in Europe and told family members to take some to reduce their fever. Of course, when they did that they felt better but they were still sick. Not only that, they were still contagious. They would increase infection rates during the celebration as they were seeing people exposing them to the virus.

Now this strain of influenza was particularly virulent and probably would have killed a lot of people. At that time, however, aspirin was considered a wonder drug and the dosage rate of aspirin was extremely high. When aspirin is combined with a viral infection it can cause a very deadly side illness called Reye’s Syndrome. Many people are believed to have died from that. The aspirin was given to lower the fever but with Reye’s syndrome it doesn’t work and people can hemorrhage as a result. Of course, doctors didn’t learn that fact until many years later. They thought that the cause of death was the high fever. The lesson was that high fevers are deadly and we should lower them as quickly as possible. This was standard practice in medicine up until recently and paranoia of fevers continues to this day.

Fevers, though, allow our bodies to tune up. Fevers help the body fight off infections. The fever is caused by an immune response in the body and allows it to discover and fight invaders appropriately. Immune cells work more efficiently and make the viruses and bacteria less efficient. Our bodies clean out cells that have been taken over by viruses. The fever redistributes metals in the body so that two things happen. One, bacteria can’t feed on the metals to make themselves stronger and two, the excess metals can be eliminated by the liver. Not only does this help fight infection, it helps with mental health too as we will see in later blog posts. Fever is a good thing for the body.

Fortunately this lesson is slowly being unlearned. In fact, many medical schools are now teaching otherwise. The Yale School of Medicine recommendation for children is that you can wait out a fever up to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s high! But our bodies are designed to do that although it is generally not a very comfortable experience. As I lay there that day, Hickory next to me, with the 104-degree temperature, I felt I would die at any moment. But I didn’t and I was stronger for it.

Note: As a general rule, I ask patients to call me if the fever goes over 104 degrees Fahrenheit. I like to have a plan in place with them in case it spikes quickly but I’ve not had to intervene in over 10 years of practice.

How to stay healthy and fit in mind & body? That’s been a question for the ages. Why do some people get sick and others don’t? While I want to discuss mind & body, (and spiritual healing too) in this blog, I want to start with a simple example that is more relevant to most people as we head into fall and winter. How do we avoid colds and flus? If we get one, how does the body recover? Answering this question may be important to better understand the balance between mind, body, and spirit and why some people end up with depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions.

How to Stay Healthy in Mind & Body? Or Why Do Some People Get Sick?

There are many theories proposed to answer why some people get sick. My focus has been more about mental/emotional health and most of the time that’s what I write about too. But as we’ll see in future posts, there are layers and layers of complexity to answering this question. So let’s start with why people get a cold or flu. Modern medicine believes that we get sick because of a virus or bacteria that invades and overwhelms our immune system.

Colds and flu represents the number one reason for office visits to the doctor and the cause of the most days of work missed. Buzz Aldrin is quoted as saying, “we can put a person on the moon but still can’t cure the common cold.” Science thinks they know how and why people get sick but there is still no cure, interestingly enough. The theory, as it is understood in the mainstream, is that a pathogen (either a virus or bacteria) invades the body (an outside force) to cause an infection in the body and create the disease. (For a moment, turn the clock back 500 years and replace “pathogen” with “evil spirit” and you have a disempowering model once again. As an interesting side note, many of the texts showing pictures of evil spirits look a lot like the electron microscope images of viruses. I’ll save this discussion for another article though.)

The theory is a little more complex than that although it still isn’t completely understood. It is believed that a pathogen disrupts the balance in the body somehow. See, it’s not so much about catching a cold or flu, as most of the viruses are likely living on our body much of the time. It is only when they overwhelm our system for whatever reason that there is a problem.

Without getting overly political, I describe to patients that our body is kind of like the United States. There are citizens, documented aliens, and harmful undocumented aliens. (At the time of writing this, immigration is a hot political topic so patients can relate to this analogy. I don’t generally like to discuss politics with patients). There are 30 trillion human cells in the typical human body. Each cell has a particular function and specialty. We also have countless other documented aliens – mostly bacteria – that help protect our skin, help with digestion and so forth. The last group is the pathogens that we don’t want in the body. The reality is that there is no way to really keep them out 100%. Somehow though, our immune cells circulate through the body and keep the undocumented aliens (pathogens) in check most of the time. Every once in awhile they fail to do that and an outbreak occurs in the body. When this happens, our immune system sends out a larger alarm in the form of inflammatory cytokines (hormones that communicate to other parts of the body) to mobilize other parts of the immune system to fight the infection. This process is what causes us to have symptoms of sneezing, aches, chills, and/or fever. We’ll see in another post why this is key to understand some mental illness and chronic disease.

There is likely something to this theory as well. Washing hands, not picking your nose, and staying away from people who are sick definitely helps decrease the spread of disease. Other theories abound that are equally and maybe more plausible including a disturbance in Qi (from a Chinese medicine perspective), disruption of mental/emotional balance (Louise Hay and others), spikes in inflammation or detox reaction (many researchers), and a host of other possibilities. (Maybe washing hands is a form of psychic purification for example).

But let’s turn the current disease model on its head for just a moment. What if one of these other theories is correct? What if the Qi is disturbed, or there is a mental/emotional imbalance that causes illness? A different way to look at this is that a cold or flu represents a disruption of the balance or homeostasis in the body. On his deathbed, Louis Pasteur is said to have recanted his theory to say that Antoine Béchamp (his main rival) was correct. Béchamp proposed that illness is about the terrain and not about the pathogen. His theory is that the pathogens are typical inhabitants of the body and for the most part he has been proven correct. In other words, we don’t get ill because of the pathogen necessarily but rather that there is an imbalance in the body allowing the pathogen to take advantage of the body. The pathogens are already there. So could washing hands be a placebo?

Another possibility is that the body has too much toxicity (think heavy metals, too much sugar or alcohol, or breathing in soot when there’s a nearby forest fire) and it wants to purge that to bring the body back into balance. It isn’t uncommon for one to feel like one is getting sick after this and have all of the same symptoms (including fever) as if one has a cold or flu, but a pathogen isn’t the culprit. Rather, there is another imbalance in the system.
From this viewpoint, the treatments that we think of to prevent a cold or flu, Echinacea, zinc, vitamin C, and so forth may not be the best approach. Immune boosting vitamins may not have the intended effects that we want. Rather we may want something that helps the body better recognize toxicity so as to facilitate removal of those toxins. Or we may want to help the organ systems that remove waste be more open and efficient. This slight shift in paradigm changes the approach to disease and illness.

If the problem is mental, emotional, or spiritual then treatment and prevention must focus on those factors to heal. Maybe this is why the placebo effect may be helpful. Or why there are so many anecdotal stories of faith healers, spiritual healers, spontaneous healings, and so forth. Of course, there is still something happening at the biological level, but maybe we can see a connection between the realm of the seen and the unseen.

My first year of medical school had a required course called Naturopathic Philosophy. Multiple professors giving their perspectives on being a Naturopathic Doctor (ND) taught the class. An important question in ND practice is one’s philosophy about how healing occurs. In one of the classes, the discussion of how to heal came up. Early in the course, there was one professor I was immediately drawn to. He was a Naturopathic Doctor and not an acupuncturist, but he spoke in terms of how organ systems interacted much like in Chinese Medicine.

As a quick side note, I am mildly trained in Chinese Medicine. I don’t use acupuncture in my practice but understand some of the principles. Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM) works within the context of five-element theory that believes that different organ systems interact in the body in ways that can create imbalances. A symptom might show up in the heart but that may not be where the problem originates. Western medicine has some of this concept in it as well. For example, high blood pressure may have less to do with the heart and more to do with water retention because of kidney troubles. Generally though, Western Medicine attempts to gain symptom relief within the context of the biochemistry and pathology.

The speaker that day, Dr. Dickson Thom, discussed a six-element theory based on Anthroposophical Medicine and the work of Rudolf Steiner. The five-pointed star of CCM became a six-pointed star of two interlaced triangles in Dr. Thom’s model. The bottom triangle consisted of kidney/adrenal, digestion, and lung. (See diagram 1). These organ systems are about assimilation and elimination. If there is an imbalance in one, symptoms may appear in another. For example, people with liver congestion may present with allergies. A Western Medical approach would be to give anti-histamines, resolving the symptom but not necessarily the underlying problem.

Understanding the interactions of organ systems gives a better indication of how to treat disease. It also creates great complexity even for practitioners. Seeing the interconnections between body parts is requisite to effective medicine. The goal in Chinese Medicine and Naturopathy is balance of physiology.

What isn’t on the diagram is the interaction between the physical body and the mental/emotional and spiritual components of human existence. Much has been written about these topics, and Anthroposophical medicine discusses the interaction of the mental and spiritual with the body. That day we touched on the subject when Dr. Thom stated that it takes years for people to regain health. I questioned that assumption and spoke to him at a break. I said to him, “people can heal spontaneously.” He said, “that’s true, but they don’t.”

Dr. Thom and I have continued this discussion many times over the last 15 years, honing our arguments and discussing cases that illustrate our perspective views. We shared cases where people improved in ways that neither of us expected. I had a case several years ago of a patient who, in the process of doing neurofeedback, had an opening of his heart that couldn’t be explained by the treatment. His other physical symptoms disappeared at the same time. The headaches, anxiety, insomnia, and muscle aches were gone. The neurofeedback treatment could explain some of this, including the relief of headaches, anxiety and insomnia, but not necessarily the good feeling and the muscle aches. His grief and broken heart over his divorce also lifted. What happened?

Dr. Thom and I discussed several patients with cancer that, medically speaking, should be dead but somehow healed and went into remission. There are no answers only questions. The purpose of this blog is to explore these questions. “How do people heal?” is one question, but other questions abound such as, “What is the connection between heart and brain?” “Where does mind reside?” and “How does one mend a broken heart?” It is my purpose to explore these questions, not so much to provide an answer as to ask the question.

I have had some serious writer’s block for some time with this blog. My issues started when I decided to change the brain book into a heart/brain book. The Power of the Heartappealed to me. It’s not like I was planning to write a book on the brain. My first book, Feel Well, Play Well: Amazing Golf through Whole Health was a bit of an accident. What I mean by that is that I hadn’t intended to write a book. I wanted to provide a handout of exercises to my many patients who golfed and injured themselves every summer doing so. I figured it would be a small 20-page booklet with pictures of how to do stretches before and after playing a round to prevent the most common injuries. Two hundred pages later I had 6 chapters, around 50 exercises, and other healthcare tips that helps improve not just one’s golf game, but also one’s health.

I haven’t marketed that book very well. It’s not that I’m not proud of it. It was quite the accomplishment. I wrote it in six weeks. The book poured out of me. The editing took longer, a lot longer. But it has received good reviews and my patients have loved it. My passion though is bigger than golf. Bigger than sports medicine. Bigger than not getting injured.

The brain book started in much the same way. I wasn’t planning on writing a book about the brain. I was writing a 2,000-word article about the brain and reasons that mental emotional issues arise from physiologic and social perspectives. It was to be an educational piece for the clinic’s website. The ten-page article became one hundred pages. I realized I had another book.

The trouble is that my work is bigger than just the brain. I have done neurofeedback for almost 10 years now and combine it with other natural modalities including helping the body be better at eliminating toxins, reducing inflammation, balancing nutrients in the body, and helping digestive problems. I work with a variety of ailments including neurological conditions such as MS and Parkinson’s but also mental/emotional problems including anxiety, depression, Reactive Attachment Disorder, OCD, ADD/ADHD, and autism. What has struck me in all these years is how some people have a change of heart more than a change in brain function.

I am starting to learn more about how the heart influences the brain, how imbalances in the body affect both, how trauma can be stored affecting one’s ability to enjoy life. My passion is about helping people heal. Heal in mind, heal in brain, heal in body, heal in heart, heal in spirit. Every deserves perfect health and what has occurred to me is that when we reach a tipping point of balanced people in our society, our society will become a more just, balanced, and healthy place to live. Thus far, I have helped heal one person at a time. Now I want to bring this knowledge to more people. I want to empower you, the reader to take charge of your health. I want to show you the connections I’ve learned about so that you can balance your body, achieve optimal health, and have more joy in your life.

How do we achieve this? What allows one person to become anxious or depressed in the face of underwhelming circumstances while another person walks through life with grace and happiness when their entire world is seemingly falling apart? Why does a particular biochemical imbalance lead to one diagnosis such as schizophrenia in one person and depression in another? Why do two people facing the same disaster have completely different responses to that event? These are the questions that interest me. The answers though, don’t lie exclusively in modern science but in the depths of spirit and philosophy.